The morning-after pill brand handed out at Olivia Rodrigo’s concert is fighting stigma against emergency contraception

But the freebies quickly went from an exciting gift for concertgoers to a controversy. By the end of the week, Rodrigo’s team announced that abortion rights groups invited to set up at her shows would no longer hand out the morning-after pill because “children are present at the concert.” The decision disappointed some women’s health advocates, who pointed out that teens have sex and distributing contraceptives—emergency or not—can help ensure safe sex.

At that Missouri show, the brand of emergency contraception being given out wasn’t Plan B, the best-known morning-after pill, but Julie, a relatively new brand selling the same 1.5 milligram levonorgestrel pill for around the same price, $45-$50. Cofounded by Julie Schott, the founder of acne patch brand Starface, the brand is led by CEO Amanda E/J Morrison.

Launched in late 2022, Julie aims to put a fun and accessible spin on emergency contraception. Morrison calls the brand a “content-first pharmaceutical company.” Its innovation is not in its product, but how it talks about it.

An Olivia Rodrigo show is squarely in the Julie wheelhouse. The brand, which Morrison describes as a knowledgeable “big sister,” has gone after Gen Zers and millennials, emphasizing education and reduction of stigma. Its ads include billboards with the taglines “don’t turn this semester into a trimester” and “when you don’t want to be a mommy influencer,” plus a commercial featuring two men fighting over the last box in a drugstore. Alongside this kind of advertising, the brand hopes to address common myths, like the fear that repeat use of emergency contraception could lead to infertility, and has donated 1 million boxes of its emergency contraception to community health organizations and other partners.

Julie launched in a category that has a clear leader: Plan B, a brand synonymous with the product itself. “We appreciate that they launched on the shelf and they did the work with the FDA to get [emergency contraception] cleared for over-the-counter—thank you for the access,” Morrison says. “And now it’s time for phase two.”

The Rodrigo hiccup shows how stigmatized emergency contraception still can be; it’s not helped by anti-abortion legislation that conflates the pill, which prevents ovulation, with ending a pregnancy. (I spoke to Morrison before the Rodrigo show, and the brand didn’t respond to request for comment about the incident.) Next, Julie is aiming to expand into other sexual health categories, including herpes and STD care and birth control.

Morrison says she doesn’t spend much time worrying about what would happen to the brand if emergency contraception were banned. “If there’s a world where [emergency contraception] is banned, the business is so secondary,” she says. “Because that would be a huge blow for women everywhere.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Scoring big. Angel City FC is reportedly hunting for a new owner as the celebrity-backed women's soccer franchise tries to resolve board tension by bringing in a new majority backer. The San Diego Wave, meanwhile, is reportedly being sold for $113 million, a National Women's Soccer League record.

- Back in session. A Fulton Superior Court judge declared that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should not be disqualified from prosecuting a racketeering case against Donald Trump and his allies as long as the special prosecutor she was once dated steps down. Trump’s legal team had argued that Willis’s relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she promoted to lead prosecutor, was financially beneficial to Willis and therefore a conflict of interest. NBC

- Heiring it out. The heiress to an Austrian chemical fortune is letting 50 strangers decide how to give away the €25 million ($27 million) she inherited from her late billionaire grandfather. Marlene Engelhorn picked applicants she felt represented the whole Austrian population. “This is a huge relief knowing that the process of redistribution is much more legitimate and thorough and democratic than I could ever do it,” she said. “Nobody needs another foundation.” Fortune

- Acquisitions with a mission. Warren Buffett protégé Tracy Britt Cool is building a private equity empire of mid-sized companies. Cool, who cofounded the Kanbrick private equity firm in 2020, told CNBC that she wants to build a platform for mid-size firms that are typically offered less attention than startups. CNBC

- Waiting game. WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani sent a hopeful memo to employees last week as the company's shares sink, dragged down by the booming popularity of weight loss pills like Ozempic and Oprah Winfrey's exit from the board. Sistani blasted negative media coverage and assured employees that a turnaround is coming. Fortune

- Partnership peril. John Lewis and Partners continues to struggle under Chair Sharon White. The U.K.’s largest employee-owned retailer announced it would not be able to pay bonuses to any of its 83,000 employees for the second year in a row despite turning a profit. The partnership's financial struggles are casting doubt on the once-revolutionary ownership model. Fortune

ON MY RADAR

How Dr. Becky professionalized parenting The Cut

Being a FTSE 100 chief executive is increasingly a numbers game The Times

'The extra shift': The unpaid emotional labor expected of women at work BBC

PARTING WORDS

"I hope that I can continue to scare myself creatively and do the things that I don’t know if I can pull off. That gets both harder and easier. It’s such a paradox as you get older."

— Actress Carla Gugino on finally getting the roles she's always wanted after decades in the industry